Dance as art has been philosophically characterized as involving the natural
expressiveness of human movements. But while some authors find the
defense of expressiveness essential, others claim that it is not relevant to the
understanding of dance and favour instead a focus on style, a supposedly
more significant artistic feature.
This paper is an attempt to provide an alternative account to both these
positions, with the first (namely, that the dancers are supposed to convey
emotions to us by their naturally expressive movements) seeming too
naturalistic and the second (that dance only consists in the performance of
complicated gestures of a certain style) overly stylistic.